The engine is also back in and I have confirmed that the change I recently made to the radiator tilt position provided a big improvement in clearance between the radiator hose and thermofan. Even with this change, I still would have needed to trim the thermofan cage (as seen in below photo) but the radiator hose no longer fouls on the cage.

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

Really nice work and very creative problem solving, but you might have created yourself an earth loop there - it can screw around with electronics - the kind of problems that just don't make any sense... like temperature gauges reading wrong at certain RPM, coils firing at the wrong time, squealing through speakers

Your battery is earthed in the boot floor, and then again at the front subframe and again to the body so there are 2 earth paths from the battery to your subframe. I think you should isolate it in the boot the same way as the 12V

I assume you plan to use the subframe earth point as your "primary" earth point and go off to everything in a "star" layout from there, in which case, good plan

Really nice work and very creative problem solving, but you might have created yourself an earth loop there - it can screw around with electronics ...Your battery is earthed in the boot floor, and then again at the front subframe and again to the body so there are 2 earth paths from the battery to your subframe...

Thanks! You are dead right about the ground loop and I forgot to consider it as a potential issue (even though I've encountered it before in circuit board designs ). I've had a talk to an auto electrician and he has confirmed that ground loops can definitely introduce unwanted electrical noise and/or sensor voltage errors, and that connecting the negative battery post to the body shell is the safest and best common-ground point for sensitive electronics. In light of this, I will remove the entire ground battery cable and the battery will retain the standard configuration where the negative battery post connects to the boot floor via a short cable.

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

In light of this, I will remove the entire ground battery cable and the battery will retain the standard configuration where the negative battery post connects to the boot floor via a short cable.

I wouldn't remove it, I'd keep it the way you've done it and insulate it away from the boot floor.

I doubt you'll get any serious voltage drop through the long cable, but it does eliminate the voltage drop we get through 50-60 year old spot welds... and you'll have a really clean earth source for your ECU

After the feedback about ground loops, I've made a second through-panel connector so that the ground cable is not attached to the boot floor.

I've drilled a hole near the factory battery ground point and the negative post of the battery will join to this new connector. I'll extend the ground cable under the car (using a butt connector and some spare cable) and route it around the battery box to fit to the new connector under the boot floor

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

I have previously made some mounts for my seats that I will be using but the biggest issue is that because I'm tall, the seats had to be moved further back and fouled against the rear storage bins and therefore the seats had to be moved inward towards the centre of the cabin. The problem with this is that with the large seats, they near enough touched which made it a bit squishy when both drivers and passenger were seated

I decided that the bins didn't need to be removed, just moved. I cut away the front of the bin and marked where the reel would be

I wanted to retain the finishing trim strip that clips on top of the storage bin sides. This was done by taping a few pieces of 2.5mm steel to my vice and clamping the new steel sheet between them in the vice. By repeating this along the length of the steel sheet, I ended up with a pretty close approximation of the original lip on the storage bin edges

After trimming the bin-front to retain only the curved section and to the match the floorpan shape shape, I welded on the new steel piece.

Everything was clamped in place and welded

I also wanted to make a cover for the seat belt reels to hide them. This was a box made from 0.8mm steel sheet that was a snug fit over the seatbelt reel. Overall I achieved an extra 40mm of room to move the seat towards the door.

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

Last edited by Mearcat on Mon Jan 07, 2019 5:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Way back in 2010 (before I had the skills for repairing and welding body panels), I got a few recommendations of a guy here in Perth to do some private rust repairs (after the shell had been blasted). After a few months, I went to inspect progress and the repairs were disgraceful. It turns out he started working out of town and got his teenage son to do much of the work instead of him. This is worst stuff what I got back

Years on and I offer up the bootlid to see how well it (didn't) fit. The gap along the bottom was not even (non-existent on the left; large gap on the right)

The right hand boot hinge holes no longer aligned with the bootlid holes

The panelwork under the boot was poorly deseamed and the bootlid stuck out 10mm!

I got a another guy to fix most of the dodgy work but at the time I couldn't source a decent rear boot panel so those repairs were limited. I recently found a guy getting rid of his rear boot section and planned to us that to complete the repairs myself however my main concern was getting the gaps around the bootlid even so I laid in some fibreglass in the boot opening edges of the good boot section before cutting it apart. This would act as my template when fitting the new panel piece

First step was to remove the boot section of my shell

and the replacement piece

Once trimmed to fit, I used that this fibreglass piece was used to position the new piece. This photo taken from within the boot shows the huge gap and the proper position of the boot panel

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

The replacement piece had the hinge holes badly worn so I welded in a new section and would redrill those holes later. This photo shows the old panel that I cut out and how bad the boot hinge holes were in the replacement piece

and because the boot floor had already been cut short, I had to weld on a small extension strip of boot floor

The new panel is now welded in place

and a new beaver panel section welded in

The boot lid was fitted and gaps are now FAR better than before and panels lined up

To redrill the boot holes, I fitted the hinges and lined up the hinge holes so they didn't bind when opening/closing.

With everything held in place with magnets, straps etc, the new holes were then drilled

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

Just a small update for now... Approval for my engine conversion from the Department of Transport (Western Australia) included a requirement to maintain all emissions equipment so the carbon canister had to be fitted. I found a spot above above the gearbox where I could squeeze in the carbon canister.

The mount for the canister was easy to make and consisted of a couple of bends on some V-shaped steel.

I welded this to the brake booster brace and the canister is very light so there shouldn't be a problem with it fatiguing the booster bracket. The canister is easily lifted off the mount when I have to access the air filter box and clean the filter. The fuel hoses were then cut to length - running up from the firewall area, sweeping around brake booster and up to the carbon canister/fuel rail

The feed & return fuel hoses run under the intake piping and the small diameter hose from the canister to the throttle body was also fitted.

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

I had previously installed some seats from a WRX and due to having to be mounted closer to the centre of the cabin to clear the rear storage bins, they were all but touching each other. Now that I have modified the position of the bins, it was time to remake the seat mounts. But... I recently drove a friends' Hyundai i30 and was impressed by the comfort, support and look of the seats but more importantly they were much narrower than the WRX seats! So I sourced a pair of them a few days later. The donor car (2013 i30 with 45,000km) had an frontal accident and the seats were a bargain at $200 for the pair

Another issue I had with the WRX seats was that they were mounted on top of the cross member to retain the sliding rails in case any one else drove the car, but my head was just too close to the roof. With the i30 seats, I decided to remove the rails and have them in a fixed position (and not care about who else would drive the car ) and also closer to the floor.

First thing was to make some MDF pieces for the base so I could shuffle the seats around and determine the final position and height I wanted.

The new seats had better lateral spacing and much better headroom

Using a simple frame to replicate the bolt holes in the seat base...

...the mounts were made so have the seats as low as possible (60mm off the floorpan). The height was limited by the clearance to the exhaust tunnel

and one useful feature I incorporated was a hole in the front mount so that once the mounts are bolted to the seats, the whole things slides onto a pair of locating pins that are in the backside of the cross-member, and that lines up all the holes in the floorpan. The holes in the floor are reinforced with 3mm steel plate welded to the underside.

Once the seats were bolted in, I then had to trim away some of the plastic cover on the side of the seats to clear the cross member.

Thanks to moving the rear bins rearward, the seats are closer to the door.

Note that the factory Mini steering column is now reeeally offset to the centreline of the drivers seat so it's a good thing that I'll be fitting a modern collapsible steering column (engineering requirement) in a more ergonomic position.

_________________-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.

Note that the factory Mini steering column is now reeeally offset to the centreline of the drivers seat so it's a good thing that I'll be fitting a modern collapsible steering column (engineering requirement) in a more ergonomic position.

Sounds like it's worth installing the modern steering column, but since this is a 1978 model it should already comply to the ADR requirements for collapsible steering columns. It's not obvious to to look at as it doesn't telescope like most, it's designed to push away from the driver during impact.

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